If you’ve still got all your hair and you wind up in hospital for more than 24 hours, you’ve screwed up. Rather than cataloguing the myriad plausible exemptions to this sweeping opener, I’m going to keep my blog on course and need only say that in my case, this is true (and clearly was for several others who’d found themselves in the NHS beds around me). I did screw up, big time, and have currently been in Kings College Hospital for 10 days. I’m not trying to be hard on myself – god knows I’ll take it easy when I get out – but I’d rather be frank in the hope that what goes down here does more than send a fresh wave of “you poor thing”s and “Hope you’re feline better soon” cat cards in my direction[1].
So what actually happened? Slipped doing a bar-top can-can on a weekend bender? Mistook Mr Muscle for Listerine (presumably also under the influence)? Overdosed on hummus and falafel wraps? Those who know me would probably have guessed the moment they discovered I’d been admitted to A&E… In five years a distant interest has reeled me in and I’ve built bikes, toured bikes, raced bikes, and crashed bikes. It’s more than a mode of transport or a weekend spin. Cycling has been adventure, friend-maker, meditation. It has also been money-burner, torture, bone-breaker. I suspect that were it not for the bike I’d have found another crutch, another stick to beat myself with. I’ve always been hard on myself and cycling was just the combination of physical challenge and mental endurance that would appeal to my rather masochist tendencies. Of course, there were amazing moments – crossing France and Spain and racing around Europe (at, I should add, no more than an amateur level and never winning) – that seemed to normalize my hobby and make me just another slightly obsessive, Lycra-clad thrill-seeker. Any sportsperson with performance on their mind will tell you that suffering is necessary to improvement. This suffering is particularly acute when it comes to performance cycling and allowed me to disguise rather than confront issues that I should probably have dealt with long ago.
On Tuesday 11th June, the bike was a ride to work: a routine 20km (12.5 miles if you’re scratching your bonce) from Limehouse to Raynes Park public library where I would be teaching a couple of boys excluded from mainstream education. I loved the work, my pupils were like none I’d ever had before and from a demographic I’d be unlikely to interact with otherwise. The journey there was the necessary prelude. This particular morning, leaving at 9am for a 10am start, the unimaginable happened: my steed contracted a painful wheezing cough and the front tyre was flat in seconds. Punctures, of course, are part and parcel of cycling and to be expected at all times – especially on litter-strewn London streets. But I’d had an unbelievable run of luck and hadn’t punctured in a year and a half (or over 12 000km depending on how you want to look at it). Still, these things happen and it was no biggie, I had all the repair kit in my bag. Spanner, wheel off (the rear, of course), tyre levers, out with the old, in with the new, pump, wheel back on, and Robert’s your dad’s brother. No sweat and I was rolling again in 5 minutes.
If I were superstitious I might have read a little more into this sudden change in the wind. I had navigated the continent, sometimes in the most adverse conditions, with my inner tubes emerging unscathed against all odds. It was almost as if Vulcan himself was looking down from the clouds above, bestowing unprecedented strength and durability upon my tyres with his vulcanizing rays… Except I’m not superstitious and all I had in mind was my lesson which I was not going to miss.
So it was that as I cruised down one side of Clapham Common, a bloke in tight commuting gear undertook me in the cycle lane on a flashy bicycle. Go ahead mate, don’t mind me (eyes rolling). The road towards Balham, Tooting, and eventually Raynes Park, is here punctuated with junctions to allow cars from side streets onto the busier thoroughfare. The lights were changing and I thought for a moment that the van in front was going to go for it, sneaking through just as they were turning red. Yet at the last moment the driver thought better of it and braked hard. I needed a little more space to stop and the cycle lane was blocked by aforementioned MAMIL[2]. Not wanting to kick the van I decided to go around the outside, which would give me enough time to stop for the lights. But the devil fools with the best-laid plan and chance would have it that Mr Ocado was doing the rounds and coming in the opposite direction. Clearly wise to the second’s delay between one light blushing red and the other beckoning green, he decided to nudge the gas and cross the junction before the traffic came through behind. Of course, what he hadn’t factored into his calculation was me popping out from behind the van opposite. The gap I’d been banking on shrank as he accelerated towards me. I kissed his wing-mirror then hit the deck.
I told you I screwed up. As drivers and benevolent passers-by rushed to the gasping body on the road I felt a total idiot. I’d have given anything to hop up, apologize profusely, and take a breather on the pavement. Sadly my right leg had other ideas and my open knee was grinning at my stupidity. I heard “Don’t look at it, you’ll faint” and wasn’t sure if they were talking to me. Obviously I was transfixed but someone lowered my head and my right eye filled with blood. Chrissake. Maybe I’ll later try to piece together my one-eyed version of proceeding events although I couldn’t vouch for their accuracy. It suffices to say that there were blue lights, uniforms, and, miraculously, an off-duty nurse attending the scene and overseeing my transfer from the A24 to Kings College Hospital. Their efficiency was admirable and I was hardly bothered, passed from one emergency service to the next like a fragile package. I would like to round off this post with a word on risk.
Risk is an inseparable part of existence. Every time we board a plane, cross the street, eat a Mr Whippy, there will be an element of it that generally goes unnoticed. Routine is the great normalizer and with habit comes a disregard for risk. Remember your first Brussels sprout? No amount of papa waving it round on an aeroplane fork would convince me that this green grenade could bring anything but face-deforming disgust. As it turned out, I loved the things and scoffed the lot (and fulfilled the prophecy of an upset stomach in doing so). So too, cycling. People often say that the thought of riding on busy streets is terrifying. This is certainly an understandable concern but I’ve now been doing it for so long that it’s hard to contemplate any other way of getting around and I’ve always loved this part of the day when I’m part of the city’s ebb and flow. I’ve tried a few different kinds of riding and would classify myself as experienced. Commuting was second nature and rush hour didn’t ruffle me.
Yet beneath this display of competent calm that I’d worked up to, I had become hardened to the real dangers of each journey. I wasn’t a reckless rider and was well aware of the potential pitfalls of the enterprise. But every day is another roll of the dice, however much we kid ourselves to the contrary. In all that we do, there is a law of averages that it’s best not to overlook. And though the probability of having such a prang was small, I should have made more allowance for it than I did – particularly given the mileage I was clocking up.
It still sounds strange when doctors and visitors alike tell me how lucky I have been. Are you taking the piss? I feel like asking. In one abrupt moment, my plans for the coming days and months had gone out the window. I’d had an avocado on the windowsill for 3 days that would have been perfectly ripe by lunchtime – if only I’d made it home. It’s often the small injustices that sting the most. But I’m coming to my senses (about bloody time) and yes, I am lucky. I’ll live and learn.
[1] For the record, I should state my immense gratitude for the outpouring of kindness and genuine sympathy. I normally vomit a bit whenever I see one of those posts on social media (normally from rather vain musicians) telling the cyber audience how bloody “humbled” they were to play on X stage in front of Y number of people and what a privilege it is to replay the glory of it to us lot, obviously accompanied with professionally shot photo/video evidence featuring their modest selves. But I do appreciate the compassion that has radiated my way. More on that later. Oh, and those cards really did crack me up.
[2] Middle-Aged Man In Lycra. At the rate I’m going I don’t need to worry too much aboutreaching this unflattering condition, MAP (Middle-Aged Paraplegic) being more my current trajectory.
ALL HAIL THE ALGORITHM 